- Hardcover: 263 pages
- Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press (Jan 23 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0965590100
- ISBN-13: 978-0965590105
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14.7 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 526 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,791,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Blue Kansas Sky collects four powerful and beautifully written novellas (one previously unpublished) by one of science fiction's best writers, Michael Bishop, winner of the Nebula Award, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award.
The opening story is "Blue Kansas Sky," which is original to this volume, and may or may not be fantasy. The story line alternates between the coming-of-age of Sonny Peacock, fatherless child of the '50s and '60s, and the redemption of his ex-inmate uncle, Rory Peacock. Set in 1988, the World Fantasy Award-nominated "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana" examines South Africa's brutal institutionalized racism through the lens of a white Afrikaner who becomes a quantum-mechanical invisible man to members of his own race. In the Hugo and Sturgeon Award finalist "Cri de Coeur," three Earthly starships travel to the Epsilon Eridani star system, with disastrous results. In the Hugo and Nebula Award finalist "Death and Designation among the Asadi," an anthropologist comes to the planet BoskVeld to study an inexplicable alien race; he may be the first to unlock their secrets, or he may be going mad--or both. --Cynthia Ward
From Booklist
This volume brings four novellas by one of the pillars of literary sf in the 1970s and 1980s back in print. "Blue Kansas Sky" is an sf take on growing up in the Bible Belt. "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana" deals with South Africa under the bad old regime. "Cri de Coeur" is a classic insider versus outsider tale, and "Death and Designation among the Asadi" is one of the foundation stones of anthropological sf as well as of Bishop's career. Their appeal is definitely greatest to literary sf readers or scholars, but since most of them have disappeared into the bibliographical olla podrida that is the fate of most short sf, Golden Gryphon deserves favor for fishing them out so that they can reappear on the sf shelves. Unfortunately, James Morrow's introduction tells much more about him than about the stories, so go straight to them. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bishop Soars,
By
This review is from: Blue Kansas Sky (Hardcover)
Blue Kansas Sky is a collection of 4 novellas spanning 3 decades and the full spectrum of Bishop's talent. The title story is a sweet, poignant coming-of-age story set in Bishop's semi-fictional Van Luna, KS: it's all about life and growing up and the random difficulties of doing so. The last line is guaranteed to send you reeling. "Cri di Coeur" and "Death and Designation among the Asadi" are stunning morality tales in the guise of science fiction; as usual, Bishop's characters, no matter where or when they are, portray humanity at its most believable, wanderers who find hope in the most fragile of circumstances. The ringer for me, though, is "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana," a magical-realistic look at the horror of racism, the sin of inaction, all neatly and convincingly tied up with the Theory of Everything. Quite simply: amazing.This is a collection for fantasists, for realists, for anyone who enjoys one of our best unsung writers at his very best.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Work from a Genre-Flexible Storyteller,
By John C. Snider (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blue Kansas Sky (Hardcover)
Michael Bishop, Nebula Award-winning author of No Enemy but Time, has just released Blue Kansas Sky, which collects four of his short works - one never before been seen in print - in a single volume. These stories showcase his mastery of different genres, and provide the reader with an sampling from various phases in Bishop's writing career. "Blue Kansas Sky" is a moving story of a young boy in 1950s small-town America, who struggles between his love for an uncle just released from prison and loyalty to his mother (who blames the man for her husband's death). Bishop incorporated many details from his own childhood to make this tale come alive. There's no science fiction here at all - just an engaging tale, extremely well written. Michael Bishop is adept at incorporating fresh words and unexpected turns of phrase without making the reader scramble for a thesaurus. In "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thurbana," a well-to-do Afrikaner "ghosts" in and out of reality after a freak auto accident and is forced to watch as the security police interrogate two black laborers - one who plays around with cosmic string theory as a hobby; another who receives pirate radio broadcasts courtesy of a metal plate in his skull. This story is very difficult to get through - not because it is poorly written (indeed, just the opposite); but because it captures in chilling detail the horrors of the old Apartheid system. "Cri de Coeur" (Cry from the Heart) tells the story of a man who must cope with the responsibilities, and revel in the joys, of raising a son with Down's Syndrome aboard a generational starship seeking to colonize another star system. "Death and Designation among the Asadi" deals with a human anthropologist living in the wilds of an alien planet, struggling to understand the enigmatic rituals of its lion-maned hominids - without losing his sanity. [After reading this story I asked the author what I should do if I didn't fully understand it - read it again, or embrace the mystery? His answer: "Death and Designation" is my Solaris (a novel by Stanislaw Lem). Real aliens, Lem implies, defy comprehension because they ARE alien. On the other hand, you could read my novel Transfigurations, which incorporates the novella, and which more than one critic badmouthed for explaining rather than embracing the original mystery. They may have done so with some justice.] Blue Kansas Sky is a wonderful collection of stories that I heartily recommend. It's published by Golden Gryphon Press (a small firm specializing in anthologies).
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-read for Bishop's legion of SF & fantasy fans,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blue Kansas Sky (Hardcover)
Michael Bishop is a Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author. Blue Kansas Sky showcases four of his best novellas under one cover. These superbly written stories include Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thuban; Cri De Coeur; Death and Designation Among the Asadi; and the title piece, Blue Kansas Sky. This outstanding anthology is enhanced for the readers with an informative introduction to Michael Bishop and his writing by James Morrow. Blue Kansas Sky is "must reading" for Bishop's legion of science fiction and fantasy fans.
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